It's OK Now — Jennifer Shalamanov

It’s Ok Now is a non-profit Bay Area organization focussed on teen well-being. Working closely with the client, our five-member team researched and designed an app prototype to help teens who are experiencing mental wellness issues.

Methods: User Surveys & Interviews; User Personas; Research Synthesis & Affinity Mapping; User Journey Mapping; Competitive Analysis; User Flow; Wireframes; Usability Testing; High-Resolution UI; Prototype

Tools: Sketch, InVision

Outcome: Working prototype delivered to client for presentation to potential investors

According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, one in five adolescents between the ages of 13 and 18 has a mental health condition. It’s OK Now was developed to help mitigate those exact issues. Focusing on wellness as opposed to illness, It’s OK Now is an online community for teens and pre-teens to engage in positive dialogue in and around mental wellness.

While there are numerous mental health apps, none truly focus on catering specifically to teens. It’s OK Now aims to be a forum for teens to talk to one another and feel comfortable and welcome.

I led user research. Given the users’ age range, gathering data proved to be more difficult than expected. Luckily, we were able to tap our classmates and found that a few people had siblings and cousins in middle and high school. We were able to solicit information from them and their friends.

User Surveys
We began by surveying teens about their personal experiences and challenges with mental wellness via Google Forms. The client had also done some similar research. We had a total of 25 responses. These provided important insights into teen behaviors, coping mechanisms, online platforms they turned to and what features they valued the most.

A standout finding from the surveys was that females are more likely than males to admit to depressive feelings or any mental health struggles.

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Affinity Mapping & Competitive Analysis
The client, It’s OK Now, provided us with a list of apps to explore. We used affinity mapping to organize and better understand the data gathered during our competitive analysis.

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A major theme surfaced from our research — gamification. Gamification was included in survey results and a common element among the competitor apps we researched. We landed on including two elements of gamification — avatars and a point system.

Persona